MediaTek unveils Kompanio 1380 chipset for high-end Chromebooks
At CES earlier this year, Acer revealed three new Chromebooks — the Chromebook Spin 513, the Chromebook 315, and the Chromebook 314. While the Chromebook 314 and Chromebook 315 were pretty standard entry-level Chromebooks featuring Intel Celeron and Pentium Silver processors, the Chromebook Spin 513 was a bit different. Instead of an Intel chip, it featured MediaTek’s unannounced Kompanio 1380 chip. At the time, Acer only revealed that the Kompanio 1380 packed an octa-core CPU and an ARM Mali-G57 MC5 GPU. Now, MediaTek has finally unveiled the chip and shared more details.
The all-new MediaTek Kompanio 1380 features an octa-core CPU with four ARM Cortex-A78 performance cores clocked at 3GHz and four ARM Cortex-A55 efficiency cores clocked at 2GHz. As mentioned earlier, the chipset also packs the ARM Mali-G57 GPU for graphics-intensive tasks, along with support for quad-channel 2,133MHz LPDDR4x memory. In addition, the chipset includes MediaTek’s APU 3.0 — a multi-core AI processor that will aid with AI camera and AI voice applications while also optimizing battery life.
The Kompanio 1380 offers support for up to two 4K displays at a 60Hz refresh rate or one 4K 60Hz display and two 4K 30Hz displays. It also features support for AV1 hardware decoding, and a dedicated audio digital signal processor (DSP) for ultra-low power voice on wakeup (VoW) capabilities. For connectivity, the chipset offers support for both Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 6E, along with Bluetooth 5.0. Talking about the new chipset, C Tseng, general manager of MediaTek’s Intelligent Multimedia Business Unit said, “Kompanio 1380 continues MediaTek’s legacy as the No. 1 chipmaker for Arm-based Chromebooks, elevating premium Chromebook experience with next-level performance and extra-long battery life.
This chip stands out with its outstanding processing performance, best-in-class multimedia and AI features, and smooth cloud gaming capabilities, all integrated into an ultra-efficient 6nm chip.”The MediaTek Kompanio 1380 will compete with similar ARM-based offerings from Qualcomm like the Snapdragon 7c found on the older Chromebook Spin 513. We can’t wait to get our hands on a Chromebook featuring the new MediaTek chip and put it through its paces. However, that might be a couple of months away, as the new Acer Chromebook Spin 513 with the Kompanio 1380 will go on sale in April this year, with more products to follow thereafter.
Alexia is the author at Research Snipers covering all technology news including Google, Apple, Android, Xiaomi, Huawei, Samsung News, and More.